AppLocker Keeps Remote Sessions Locked Down

AppLocker is a free utility that can prevent users connecting via terminal services from running certain applications while allowing access to others.

Maybe you have a file server at home, or a shared system where your roommates dump their files, and you want to give them access via terminal server so they can move their files around easily. Or perhaps you run IT for a small business and want to give your employees the opportunity to work remotely on a terminal server instead of issuing laptops to every employee.

In both cases, you want to provide access to your terminal server, but you don't want your users running amok on the box, opening applications they shouldn't have access to. Enter AppLocker, a free utility that can prevent users connecting via terminal services from running certain applications while allowing access to others. This way you can, for example, let people connect move files around, but they can't fire up a BitTorrent client and start downloading.

AppLocker doesn't necessarily have to be used in a terminal services environment; you could use it on any system with multiple users. Once you have the app installed, just double-click it to bring up a list of applications installed on your system. You can check or uncheck apps that you want your terminal services users (or other others) to be able to access.

If the app you want to restrict access to isn't shown, you can specify its path and filename and AppLocker will prevent users from running that particular application. The utility supports Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, and Server 2008. AppLocker is also tiny, taking up less than 1MB of space on your system.

The only down-side to using AppLocker is that if a user has administrative rights and knows that AppLocker is the utility that's preventing them from running the apps they want, they can always fire up AppLocker and change the settings. It would be helpful if AppLocker had some kind of administrative protection built into it; like requiring a password before making changes to locked-down apps, or only allowing a specific user to make changes.

In any event, the app is free, and can help you lock down a shared terminal server, or just keep it streamlined by stopping users from launching resource-heavy applications. Best of all, it's completely free.